Rao currently serves as the chairman of IAMAI and is also on the Advisory Board for the National Committee on Skill Development, CII.BENGALURU: Freshdesk, one of the most successful enterprise software startups in India, has appointed Nishant Rao, managing director of LinkedIn India as its chief operating officer.

In his new role, Rao will be responsible for all non-R&D aspects of Freshdesk’s operations. “Nishant has an impressive track record of delivering value to companies at all stages of growth in the enterprise software industry. His expertise in scaling operations across global markets makes him an excellent addition to Freshdesk’s executive team,” said Girish Mathrubootham, CEO and founder, Freshdesk.

Rao currently serves as the chairman of the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and is also on the Advisory Board for the National Committee on Skill Development, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

“With its fresh consumer approach to enterprise SaaS, I believe we can fundamentally transform the way all small and medium-sized businesses worldwide interact with their customers,” said Rao.

He will remain MD of LinkedIn India until he begins his new role at Freshdesk in November. Earlier this year, Rao was named in Economic Times’ hottest business leader under 40 list.

Rao joins the list of high-profile corporate leaders who are leaving established firms to try their hand at scaling hyper-growth companies. Recently, taxi cab aggregator Ola roped in Infosys’ outgoing CFO Rajiv Bansal as its finance head, while Snapdeal named former Airtel executive Govind Rajan as chief strategy officer.

“I am very excited about going back to my entrepreneurial roots and playing a meaningful role in shaping Freshdesk to become a global powerhouse,” said Rao. Over the past two years, Rao has scaled LinkedIn’s operations in India, including doubling its member base, accelerating their business lines and scaling the team in India. There are about 30-million LinkedIn members from India.

He started his career as one of the founding members of Epicenter Technologies, India’s first voicebased call centre. Rao holds an MBA degree from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a Bachelors in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin. Earlier this year, Freshdesk announced a $50 million funding round and has been growing rapidly, doubling its customer base in the past year to more than 50,000 customers in 145 countries.

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